How to create the perfect app

3 Ways to Make a Website Mobile-Friendly

December 2, 2011 by Gabriel Machuret

Why make a website mobile-friendly?

Lately, Android Market has been filtering out more and more apps. Apps that aren’t mobile-friendly – that is, apps that don’t look nice on a mobile screen are being targeted for extinction. If you just took a regular website, and plugged it into AppsGeyser without making your site mobile-sized first, your app could be next. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are some great ways to make your webpage mobile-friendly before you turn it into an app. There’s an added benefit, too. If you do, then non-Android mobile users will be able to use your site better in their browsers!

How do I make my website mobile-friendly?

If you have a Blogger blog, it’s just a blog setting. If you have WordPress, get the MobilePress plugin or something similar.

There are some great tools available to make a website mobile-friendly.

Onbile has a number of templates that you can easily customize to create a mobile site. Once the site has been made mobile-friendly, Onbile gives you a script to put on the website to automatically detect if visitors are coming from a mobile platform.

Mobify has an easy-to-use graphical user interface that makes creating a mobile site quick and painless. Their premium plans, however, have a hefty pricetag of over $200 monthly.

Wirenode is a great choice for small businesses. The service has a free version with easy ways to create your webpage. Some large companies have used Wirenode to create their mobile sites, so you can take a look at Mediatel AS, Vodafone, or O2 to see what their sites look like in action.

We’d love to hear about other ways to make your website mobile-friendly in the comments!